


God and the Devil Chat Over Cheap Beer

by JazzRaft



Series: Old Gods & Older Fools [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-16 05:25:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12336354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzRaft/pseuds/JazzRaft
Summary: The Oracle is dead. The world mourns. And the devil that killed her celebrates.





	God and the Devil Chat Over Cheap Beer

It was a bar entirely indistinct from any other dotting the wasteland between Altissia and Cartanica. Just another rest stop along the railroad tracks. Another refuge for travelers, wandering through the between place. Ahead was Niflheim, behind was Altissia. And in the middle was Cartanica. The crossroads between Heaven and Hell.

Gods and devils alike shadowed the foot traffic throughout the way stations and the outposts. The turnstiles twisted one more time in the wake of the untouched rush of a passenger making their train. Drafts of air whispered through breezeless ticket booths, sneaking up the hairs on the back of a teller’s neck. Bulbs flickered, but never died. And empty spaces, no matter how barren, always seemed to feel more occupied than by the one person observing the vacancy.

Such was the case with the little bar hanging off of the main thoroughfare below Cartanica Station. It was just the bartender and one lost soul nursing dreams from the bottle at the corner table. He would miss his train if she didn’t wake him. But he would miss the kindness of the booze’s distraction more if she did.

Time froze with her hovering over the table, hand suspended above the dreaming traveler’s shoulder. Then, the Devil walked in and helped himself to a drink.

A celebratory toast. The world rose glasses to celebrate the life of an idol. He poured one to cheer for her death. He’d slain one of God’s angels. And in doing so, he thought he’d done her a god damn _favor_.

 _Oracle._ What an honor. What a blessing. _What a joke._

It had been a different word when it was him. An ancient, exalted word for “savior” and “healer” and since lost to the evolution of language. Since bastardized into a synonym for “martyr.” Not a hero. Hardly even a priestess. Just a dead thing in white silk. White wings bound to her back by a promise from a coward. Tied together by a serpent in a stone, caged by a madman with the world at his fingertips.

He wondered if she even knew how to dream of flight. He wondered if she ever knew that freedom had been right there for her to take. He wondered if she even knew that she had the choice.

He shouldn’t pity the poor thing. She was a means to an end. And she made it all too easy to reach it. If he was disappointed in anything, it was just how little of a challenge she had posed to him. She was already dead when he drove in the knife. He didn’t know if that was by his own bad luck, or by the gods’ design, to steal away yet another fulfilment that was his by right.

The liquor tasted like lighter fluid.

“You are not yet satisfied.”

Only the goddess of ice could intrude upon the frozen world better than he could. And she was the only one of the Six brave enough to seek him out of her own accord. It wasn’t that the others were afraid of him. No, he couldn’t flatter himself into thinking they saw him as a threat. He was far, _far_ worse than that. He was their shame. And what was more horrifying than the proof that the gods were imperfect? He was their immortal scar, an eternal mirror to all their cruelty. And he would only die when they did.

She sat beside the slumbering drunk, her face towards him, but her eyes closed to him. Blind to the agony of man. Her ageless vessel was a sculpture beside the pair of people. Even frozen, there was more life to them than the guise that the goddess wore to walk among man. Ardyn wondered if a glass of the acid the bar served could melt her frosty shell.

“Are you asking me, or telling me? If you’re asking, I can assure you that I’m not. If you’re telling, then I can finally call you a liar.”

The unbroken façade of her face creased, still turned towards the motionless stranger at her side. Annoying, that pretension to care about an ordinary person. Acting as if the gods cared for their children beyond making them into servants.

He brought his glass over to the table and leaned beside the bartender there, paralleling her position. But instead of a helpful hand, he offered the hidden goddess his poison. She turned her face to him, but she didn’t look at him. She hadn’t looked at him for two thousand years.

“I’m sorry,” he chuckled. “Are you waiting for me to redeem myself for you? Do you want to hear me say that I didn’t _enjoy_ breaking your favorite new toy?”

“You imply that you were envious of her.”

“Would that make me even more disgusting to you?”

She went quiet. She turned her face back to the man at the table and the woman reaching for him. She stared without seeing them for the longest time. Ardyn swallowed his poison and sighed.

“They aren’t perfect,” he told her. “She isn’t waking him up out of the kindness of her heart. He isn’t here for the joy of drinking. She’s impatient. He’s a liar. They wouldn’t be human if they weren’t.”

“I know.”

His fingers tightened around the glass. A feeling passed through him that felt as pitiful and despicable as the celestial magic that touched him in Altissia. Not pity for the girl. Not fear of her. Maybe it was jealousy. That it was her lie of humanity that the gods chose to believe, where he had spent all his life showing them the truth. They believed that mankind was virtuous. That they were the gods’ own truth. Man was made in their image. And man was perfect.

He showed them that they weren’t. And he was condemned for that truth.

When she turned back to him, she _looked_ at him. Finally, after two thousand years, she opened her eyes to him. She made herself see his truth.

“You are right and you are wrong, lost king. She is impatient, but she is empathetic. He is a liar, but he seeks truth. Mankind is not made of shadows, begging for light. Nor are they lenses of the gods, eradicated of darkness from the heavens’ light. Man is where the two of us meet in the middle. Our crossroads. You taught me half of this truth. She taught me the other.”

“Yet, you loved her more.”

She rose to her feet like twilight. A slow bleed of change.

“ _Do you think there could have been any hope for us?”_ He remembers a version of himself that he had long forgotten. He remembers being a boy and his folly for mistaking the favor of the gods as love. He remembers seeing those eyes open for the first time, willing to see _him_ , of all the men in the world. He remembered being proud, he remembered infatuation, and he remembered heart-break.

He remembered a man at his side. He’s little more than a ghost now. As eternal as Ardyn, but no longer his. He remembers when he could taste liquor without feeling it curdle in his stomach. He remembers the slur of the words and getting no answer. He remembers that the man was only ever there to listen.

She remembers, too. She’s always remembered.

He hopes that it made the Oracle’s death hurt that much more.

“Best hurry,” he urged her. “The next train will be leaving soon.”

She wanted him to ask her forgiveness. She wanted him to have the other half she had so desperately sought from her last pawn. She wanted him to be better, to meet the standard of her perfect doll. But if there was a boy who could have been any of what she had wanted, he’d turned to stone and died the last time she looked at him.

Her eyes did nothing to him now. They could only incite adoration from ignorance. And he’d have to be human to be that stupid.

Time moved forward. The bartender touched the drunk man’s shoulder.


End file.
